The Shinnyo Lantern Floating Hawaii Ceremony at Ala Moana Beach is an event that will touch you. If you happen to be on O’ahu on Memorial Day, rearrange your entire schedule. This one is worth it.
History of Lantern Floating in Hawaii
The ceremony has its roots in a 1970 visit to Hawaiʻi by the founder of Shinnyo-en Buddhism, who paid his respects at Punchbowl – the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific – and at the USS Arizona Memorial. Profoundly moved, he envisioned a ceremony where people of all backgrounds could gather at the water’s edge to share hopes for peace and honor those no longer with us. His successor, Her Holiness Shinso Ito, carried out that wish on Memorial Day 1999. The ceremony has been held every year since – first at Keʻehi Lagoon, and from 2002 onward at Ala Moana Beach, where it has grown into one of the most quietly extraordinary public events in the state.
What to Expect at the Shinnyo Ceremony
The ceremony begins as the sun approaches the horizon. A Hawaiian conch shell – the pū – sounds across the beach, silencing the crowd and sanctifying the space. The deep boom of Shinnyo taiko drums follows, then an oli (Hawaiian chant) and hula performed in the traditional way. Six large Guiding Lanterns, each carrying prayers for a different category of loss – victims of war, natural disaster, famine, disease, all forms of life – are carried to the water’s edge along a path scattered with flower petals. Her Holiness offers a blessing. Then the bell rings and then the lanterns go in.
If there is a more beautiful sight in all of Hawaiʻi than thousands of candlelit lanterns spreading slowly across the darkening water while the crowd sings “Hawaiʻi Aloha” together, we haven’t found it. People weep. People who came as curious tourists find themselves unexpectedly thinking of someone they lost. That’s the thing about this ceremony – it meets you wherever you are.
How to Participate in the Shinnyo Lantern Floating Hawaiʻi Ceremony
To participate head to Ala Moana Beach between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. on Memorial Day (the last Monday of May) and pick up a free Individual Lantern at the Lantern Request Tent – one per family or group, first-come, first-served, no advance reservations and no charge. You’ll find a quiet space with tables where you can write names and messages on the paper panels, fold and assemble the lantern, and bring it to the water’s edge when the ceremony begins at 6:30 p.m. Arrive by early afternoon if you want to be sure you get one – they do run out. Military personnel and their dependents have a dedicated line and can show up with a valid military ID.
If you can’t or don’t want to float your own lantern, you can write a remembrance to be included on one of the Collective Lanterns, floated from canoes by volunteers during the ceremony. You can even submit a remembrance online from anywhere in the world and have it read as part of the event – which tells you something about how far this ceremony’s reach has grown.
The logistics are worth planning around. Ala Moana Beach Park’s parking fills fast, but there’s a complimentary shuttle from an offsite lot. Expect to stay well past dark — this is not an event you leave early.
The ceremony is free, it is open to everyone regardless of belief or background, and it is one of those rare things in travel: something that doesn’t just show you a place, but reveals something about the people who live there. In a state defined by its confluence of cultures, this is Hawaiʻi at its most genuinely itself – a Buddhist ceremony opened with a Hawaiian conch shell, closed with a Hawaiian song, attended by tens of thousands of people from every background and belief, all of them watching the same light drift quietly out to sea.
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